How to Create a Winning Sales Development Team

Last updated: March 18th, 2019

Having a sales development team is one of the best things you can do for your business. With a sales development team, you ensure that your salespeople are only getting the qualified leads, and making the most out of their time. But simply having a sales development team isn’t enough. You want to have the best team, and for that to happen, you need to find the best people. Here’s how to do this.

Design Your Ideal Candidate

Before you start putting together your team, it’s good to spend some time thinking about who you actually want on the team.

What does your ideal candidate look like?

What are their qualifications, values, and attitude?

You don’t want to walk into the interview without knowing what you’re looking for.

Think about what are the skills that your ideal candidate must have and what would be a nice extra. What sort of traits and experience should a candidate have in order for you to consider them, and what traits would be an added value for the employee?

Skillset of a perfect SDR candidate

While every company is different, there are a few skills you’ll likely want your SDR candidates to have. For starters, they should be excellent at written and verbal communication. SDRs spend much of their time reaching out to potential customers through different means of communication channels, so it’s essential that they know how to communicate effectively through multiple channels.

Beyond that, an ideal candidate should also have some experience with social media. Social media is one of the best tools available for SDRs, LinkedIn in particular. They can research companies and their employees there, and at the do prospecting. So having an idea of how social media platforms work is a great starting point for further training of new SDRs.

Finally, you’ll probably want an SDR who is motivated and driven. Cold-calling all day can become a drag, and you’ll want someone who can keep going despite rejections. While your salespeople will be dealing with qualified, ready to buy leads, this isn’t the case for your SDRs. Find people who can handle rejection, move on quickly, and motivate themselves when the days turn into a slog.

These are a few skills common amongst most SDRs, but your business may have slightly different needs. Maybe you need someone who is familiar with eCommerce software, or someone who is great at understanding the customer journey map. Take some time to consider your entire Sales Development department and think about what type of person would be a perfect fit.

Conduct Hands-on Interviews

There’s a lot you can learn about a candidate from a simple interview or from a resume – where they went to school, what sort of experience they have, what their skills are. But, that is sometimes not enough for them to be successful when it comes to certain tasks. Or how well they perform under pressure. That’s why we suggest doing a more hands-on interview.

During the interview phase, give the candidates some practice tests. Give them a task to perform that is similar to the type of tasks they’d be expected to do for you. For example, you can give them a scenario and have them make a fictional cold call. Interview techniques like this are a great way to see how a candidate will perform on the spot, rather than how they’ll respond to interview questions they’ve likely been rehearsing for a week.

Get Them Started Off Right

You’ve spent time picturing your ideal candidate, then interviewing applicants to see who fits best. You found someone that you like, and you decided to hire them. To get them started off on the right foot, it’s important that they go through a well thought out onboarding process. You can’t just sit them down at their desk and tell them to get started.

One of the first things you can do is introduce them to the rest of the team. Have them meet the fellow SDRs they’ll be working with. The sales reps they’ll be handing off their leads to and the account managers overseeing everything. Let them know who they can turn to for questions, and give everyone some time to get to know one another. If you have the time, you can even run some team building activities to help everyone get acquainted.

After that, give them an introduction to the technology you’re using. Get them familiar with the CRM your business is using and introduce them to all the pocesses. You likely have some systems in place that are vital to your sales operation, and getting your new employee to use them properly will help things run smoothly.

Finally, go over your company values and goals. Let them know what you expect of them, and what you’re trying to achieve. If you hired the right candidate, they’ll have similar values as you and will be able to quickly get on board with what you want to do.

After that, it’s just a matter of checking in with your new employee to make sure everything is running smoothly. This will allow them to ask questions and for you to provide feedback, just to make sure you’re both still on the same page regarding values and goals.

Putting Together the Best SDR Team

If you’re going to have a sales development department within your business, you might as well have the best one possible. For this to happen, you need to make smart hires and get them started on the right foot.

By taking some time to think of your ideal candidate, then conducting dynamic interviews, you can bring in the best possible people to your SDR team. This will allow you to achieve the best results, and continue to grow as a business.

Marketing Manager @ TaskDrive
Actively participating in the digital marketing world more than 5 years. Currently making sure that our website content is up-to-date and our blog is filled with easy and useful sales and marketing guides. Very passionate about dogs, topics on spirituality and Unicorns.

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